POLAND: The Livid Scar

Along the waterfront of Poland's
rubble-strewn Szczecin (formerly Stettin) towering cranes on six miles
of rebuilt docks load and unload freight at the annual rate of
4,000,000 tons. In Wroclaw (formerly Breslau) bright new arc lights
along the main streets have ended years of dim nights in the city's
bomb-shattered center. After years of neglect, Poland's "western
territories," the lands east of the Oder and Neisse Rivers taken from
Germany after the war, are slowly emerging from postwar desolation.

For 600 years the rich lands felt the strong influence of the Germans,...